The science of Zoom fatigue.

Much to ponder in this excerpt from a new book called ‘Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age’ by Richard E. Cytowic:

Only a few months into 2020, “Zoom fatigue” became a discussion topic. Most complaints were about sound or video dropping out because of poor connectivity. But video callers speak about 15 percent louder than they do in person, need effort to focus and shift attention while looking on-screen at a dozen or more participants, and must constantly gauge whether they are coming across as engaged. All this requires extra emotional effort compared to face-to-face conversation. As a result, virtual meetings went from novelty to a source of exhaustion.

The cognitive load of online meetings eats up your capacity to think, too. When face-to-face we process a slew of signals without having to consciously think about them: facial expression, gesture, posture, vocal tone and rhythm, and the distance between speakers. We read body language and make emotional judgments about whether others are credible or not. This is easy to do in person, whereas video chats force us to work to glean the same cues. This consumes a lot of energy.

Interesting reflection on ‘mirror anxiety’ too, with the suggestion of having more audio only calls:

The mental strain of having to look at oneself over hours of Zoom meetings results in what Stanford University psychologists call “mirror anxiety,” while “Zoom dysmorphia” describes a user’s anxiety about dark circles, wrinkles, or bad hair. From a sample of 10,322 subjects, 14 percent of women felt “very” or “extremely” fatigued after Zoom calls, compared to only 6 percent of men. The researchers devised a Zoom and Exhaustion Fatigue scale to assess how serious the problem felt across five dimensions of fatigue: general, social, emotional, visual, and motivational (readers can test how susceptible they are at bit.ly/332zRaS). In addition to mirror anxiety, more women than men felt trapped: they took fewer breaks and felt obligated to hover within the camera’s frame. Established research tells us that looking in a mirror raises self-consciousness and self-criticism about one’s appearance. In what sounds like a good idea, researchers suggest making some meetings audio-only as a way to “reduce the psychological costs, especially given that these costs are born unequally across society.”

[bigthink.com]

Screenable: the new app supporting digital parenting.

Om Malik, the San Francisco-based writer, photographer, and investor, investigates a new app the makers describe as ‘the kid phone for Apple families’:

Screenable, an app available for download from Apple’s App Store, allows parents to limit the features and functionalities of their child’s device. Currently available for iPhones and iPads, it offers settings appropriate for kids of varying ages.

In the words of CEO Tom Clifton:

The idea is to offer parents an easy way to dial down the phone to the right level of power for each kid’s age and stage. It’s not about locking everything down forever, but about gradually opening up access as they demonstrate responsibility.

Why do we need this app—an app that isn’t free—when Apple already offers screen time controls? Well, because, sadly, Apple has dropped the ball somewhat in this area. In my own experiences, Apple’s controls are both flaky and too fiddly. What appeals about this app (which is currently only available in the US) is its simplicity. Looking forward to testing it when it comes out here in the UK.

[om.co]

TikTok knows its app is harmful for teens.

For the first time, internal TikTok communications have been made public that show a company unconcerned with the harms the app poses for American teenagers. This is despite its own research validating many child safety concerns.

The confidential material was part of a more than two-year investigation into TikTok by 14 attorneys general that led to state officials suing the company on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok was designed with the express intention of addicting young people to the app. The states argue the multi-billion-dollar company deceived the public about the risks.

No surprises here.

[npr.org]

“My girlfriend dumped me by text — and my iPhone sent me a summary”.

A software developer discovered that his girlfriend was splitting up with him on his birthday through a new AI feature on his iPhone. It summed up her messages as: “No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from apartment.”

I’ve been testing the new Apple Intelligence features myself, and the summaries of notifications and emails have been something I’ve taken to. It’s fair to say I hadn’t considered these kinds of scenarios though!

[thetimes.com]

Why ChatGPT made this teacher quit teaching.

Victoria Livingstone, a writer, educator, and editor:

…I found myself spending many hours grading writing that I knew was generated by AI. I noted where arguments were unsound. I pointed to weaknesses such as stylistic quirks that I knew to be common to ChatGPT (I noticed a sudden surge of phrases such as “delves into”). That is, I found myself spending more time giving feedback to AI than to my students.

So I quit.

[time.com]

How AI can help diagnose depression and anxiety.

This feels like it could be genuinely transformative:

By analysing the acoustic properties of speech, these ai models can identify markers of depression or anxiety that a patient might not even be aware of, let alone able to articulate. Though individual features like pitch, tone and rhythm each play a role, the true power of these models lies in their ability to discern patterns imperceptible to a psychiatrist’s ears.

[theconomist.com]

ChatGPT uses four times more water than previously thought.

You may be hungry for knowledge, but your chatbot is thirsty for the world’s water supplies. The huge computer clusters powering ChatGPT need four times as much water to deliver answers than previously thought, it has been claimed.

Using the chatbot for between ten to 50 queries consumes about two litres of water, according to experts from the University of California, Riverside.

[thetimes.com]

The return of the knob.

Turns out that making everything a touch screen interface isn’t what we want. Christopher Mims, technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal:

Companies have spent nearly two decades cramming ever more functions onto tappable, swipeable displays. Now buttons, knobs, sliders and other physical controls are making a comeback in vehicles, appliances and personal electronics…

…Fundamentally, the problem with touch-based interfaces is that they aren’t touch-based at all, because they need us to look when using them. Think, for example, of the screen of your smartphone, which requires your undivided gaze when you press on its smooth surface.

[wsj.com] / [Apple News]

“Are we too impatient to be intelligent?”

Instinctively, people love to codify things, and make them numerical, and turn them into optimization problems with a single right answer. Because the second you acknowledge ambiguity, you now have to exercise choice. If you can pretend there’s no ambiguity, then you haven’t made a decision, you can’t be blamed, you can’t be held responsible. And what’s the first thing you remove if you want to remove ambiguity from a model? You remove human psychology, because human psychology, particularly around time, is massively ambiguous.

The whole essay, adapted from a talk given by Rory Sutherland, is fascinating.

[behavioralscientist.org]

Instagram is now restricted for teenagers.

Starting today, Instagram will begin putting new and existing users under the age of 18 into “Teen Accounts” — a move that will affect how tens of millions of teens interact with the platform. The new account type automatically applies a set of protections to young users, and only users 16 years of age and older can loosen some of these settings.

Too little, too late for many, but a good move moving forwards.

[theverge.com]

Comparing Apple under Tim Cook to Apple under Steve Jobs.

John Gruber, the technology writer who has been writing about Apple for several decades, has written a fascinating article pondering why he – and others – felt a little underwhelmed by Apple’s latest product announcements. In particular, he explores the contrast between Apple when it was led by Steve Jobs and Apple as led today by Tim Cook.

Cook has patience where Jobs would grow restless. In the Jobs era, when a keynote ended, we’d sometimes turn to each other and say, “Can you believe ____?” No one asked that after last week’s keynote. Much of what Apple announced was impressive. Very little was disappointing. Nothing was hard to believe or surprising.

This isn’t bad for Apple, or a sign of institutional decline. If anything, under Cook, Apple more consistently achieves near-perfection. Tolerances are tighter. Ship dates seldom slip. But it’s a change that makes the company less fun to keenly observe and obsess over. Cook’s Apple is not overly cautious, but it’s never reckless. Jobs’s Apple was occasionally reckless, for better and worse.

[daringfireball.net]

Australia looking to ban children from social media.

Children in Australia could be banned from social media under government plans to set an age limit to use platforms including Instagram and TikTok. It would make Australia among the first countries in the world to impose an age restriction on social media, as it aims to tackle mental and physical health concerns linked to online activity among the younger population.

Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said that a minimum age of between 14 and 16 for the use of social media apps is being considered. He then had this to say when making the announcement:

I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts. We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm.

[inews.co.uk]

Apple updates AirPods Pro with new hearing health features.

On the day Apple introduced their newest iPhones and Watches, it was an update to an existing product that may have the most significant impact.

Apple is providing the world’s first all-in-one hearing health experience with AirPods Pro with active Hearing Protection, a clinically validated Hearing Test feature, and an over-the-counter Hearing Aid feature. The first-of-its-kind software-based Hearing Aid feature helps make access to hearing assistance easier than ever at an approachable price point.

[apple.com]

“Put the smartphones away, I’m trying to eat.”

Giles Coren, the restaurant critic and Times columnist, argues that atmosphere is as much a part of dining out as the food itself, and if you’re scrolling or texting, you’re ruining it for everyone:

…people with their smartphones out, scrolling, texting, swiping while they eat or between courses or at any time at all between walking in and walking out drives me into conniptions. Because if you’re on your phone, you’re not there. You are sucking the energy out of a room that was built to welcome and cherish your presence. You are disrespecting the low-paid workers who serve you and spitting in the faces of paying guests who have come to take part in an atmosphere of which you are an integral part.

[thetimes.com]

Will AI ever be able to make true art?

Ted Chiang makes the case for AI never being able to make true art:

Some commentators imagine that image generators will affect visual culture as much as the advent of photography once did. Although this might seem superficially plausible, the idea that photography is similar to generative A.I. deserves closer examination. When photography was first developed, I suspect it didn’t seem like an artistic medium because it wasn’t apparent that there were a lot of choices to be made; you just set up the camera and start the exposure. But over time people realized that there were a vast number of things you could do with cameras, and the artistry lies in the many choices that a photographer makes. It might not always be easy to articulate what the choices are, but when you compare an amateur’s photos to a professional’s, you can see the difference. So then the question becomes: Is there a similar opportunity to make a vast number of choices using a text-to-image generator? I think the answer is no. An artist—whether working digitally or with paint—implicitly makes far more decisions during the process of making a painting than would fit into a text prompt of a few hundred words.

[newyorker.com]

“Mobile phones not linked to brain cancer”.

The review found no overall association between mobile phone use and cancer, no association with prolonged use (if people use their mobile phones for 10 years or more), and no association with the amount of mobile phone use (the number of calls made or the time spent on the phone).

“I’m quite confident with our conclusion. And what makes us quite confident is … even though mobile phone use has skyrocketed, brain tumour rates have remained stable,” said Karipidis, Arpansa’s health impact assessment assistant director.

Surely that puts this issue to bed once and for all?!

[guardian.com]

Behind the scenes with the system prompts guiding Claude AI

Interesting to get a sneak peak at some of the rules defining what Claude AI (an alternative to ChatGPT) can and can’t do.

Every generative AI vendor, from OpenAI to Anthropic, uses system prompts to prevent (or at least try to prevent) models from behaving badly, and to steer the general tone and sentiment of the models’ replies…

…Anthropic, in its continued effort to paint itself as a more ethical, transparent AI vendor, has published the system prompts for its latest models…

…The latest prompts, dated July 12, outline very clearly what the Claude models can’t do — e.g. “Claude cannot open URLs, links, or videos.” Facial recognition is a big no-no; the system prompt for Claude Opus tells the model to “always respond as if it is completely face blind” and to “avoid identifying or naming any humans in [images].”

Kyle Wiggers, author of the piece, then concludes:

If the prompts for Claude tell us anything, it’s that without human guidance and hand-holding, these models are frighteningly blank slates.

After a ten-year hiatus, my long-time friend and mentor, Alex McManus, is back writing.

The Digital Grim Reaper - by AleXander McManus

There’s a ton of great thoughts and reflections in his article, but it’s this one line that I’ve been musing on for days:

“Utilize AI for the purposes of making the world more human.”